At some point, college football stopped being a sport and became a high-stakes yard sale where everyone is overpaying for things they don’t need. But even in this era of realignment chaos, NIL arms races and conferences that stretch across four time zones, Sacramento State’s latest move deserves a slow clap.

The Hornets are reportedly dropping $23 million — actual, real, American dollars — to join the Mid-American Conference in 2026.

Twenty-three million. To join the MAC. I’m not sure whether to laugh, cry or ask if someone accidentally added an extra zero.

This is Sacramento State we’re talking about — a respectable Football Championship program, sure, but not exactly a sleeping giant waiting to be unleashed on the national stage. And the MAC, bless its Tuesday-night-in-a-snowstorm heart, is not the SEC. It’s not even the Mountain West. It’s the MAC: home of directional schools, chaotic midweek shootouts, and the occasional 52-49 thriller that only insomniacs and gamblers witness.

And Sac State is paying more than the GDP of a small island nation just to get in the door.

The Hornets will replace Northern Illinois, which is leaving for the Mountain West as a football-only member. When a founding MAC member decides it’s time to pack up and head west, you don’t usually see a stampede of schools fighting to pay eight figures to take their place. Yet here comes Sacramento State, checkbook open, ready to leap into the FBS after the NCAA denied its attempt to join as an independent. There was talk of the Hornets also knocking at the door of the refurbished PAC-12 Conference.

You almost have to admire the commitment. Or the audacity. Or the complete disregard for financial self-preservation.

School president Luke Wood and athletic director Mark Orr clearly believe this is the path forward. They’ve already moved every non-football sport to the Big West. They’ve built an NIL budget “north of $1 million.” They hired Arizona assistant Alonzo Carter — a first-time head coach — to lead the charge. They’ve done everything short of painting “FBS OR BUST” on the side of the stadium.

But here’s the part that makes you blink twice: Sacramento State is paying more to join the MAC than some schools spend on an entire year of athletics. And for what? A non-conference schedule that includes Tarleton State, Maine, North Alabama and a Week 2 trip to Fresno State. A conference slate that will send them to places like Akron, Bowling Green and Ypsilanti, Mich., in late October. A league where the TV exposure is… let’s call it “boutique.”

This isn’t a knock on the MAC. MACtion is fun. MACtion is chaotic. MACtion is the reason half the country has watched a 58-55 game between Toledo and Ball State at 11:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. But MACtion is not worth $23 million. (Officially, it’s $18 million for MAC membership and $5 to the NCAA.)

And that’s the part that makes this whole thing feel surreal. Sacramento State isn’t buying prestige. It’s not buying national relevance. It’s buying membership in a conference that most Power Five fans forget exists until a MAC team upsets someone in September.

The MAC’s revered bowl game at Ford Field in Detroit — known under several mantles including Motor City Bowl, Quick Lane Bown and lastly the Game Above Sports Bowl — also went belly-up last week after 29 years. The game typically featured a team from the MAC against a team from the Atlantic Coast Conference from 2014 to 2019 and a team from the Big Ten Conference from 2020 to 2025.

The Detroit Lions operated the annual bowl game since 2014.

The last game was played in December, when Central Michigan fell to Northwestern, 34-7.

Maybe the Hornets will thrive. Maybe Carter will build a winner. Maybe the move will pay off in ways we can’t see yet. But right now, from the outside, it looks like Sacramento State just walked onto a used-car lot, pointed at a 2009 sedan with 180,000 miles, and said, “I’ll give you full sticker price and a tip.”

College football realignment has produced some wild headlines. This one might be the wildest yet.

Sacramento State is officially all-in. The question is whether anyone else at the table is even playing the same game.

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Greg Williams is a reporter and Weekend Editor for The Sentinel. A Mifflin County native, he has been writing for The Sentinel since 1991.